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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Does anyone have suggestions for non-grimdark modern sci-fi? Something hopeful that imagines what a good AI future could look like? Do optimistic people not write novels anymore?

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Iain M Banks Culture series would be the obvious one.

Also Children Of Time which I see another commenter got downvoted into oblivion for. Its optimisitic and it definitely involves AI. Also one of the most lauded sci fi novels of the last decade.

Edit: also Slow Gods by Catherine Webb fits your criteria and is very good

> Culture series

Where the humans are the pets and the (machine) Minds are the real protagonists, in control of everything?

Where the machines have crafted a language that affects the way people think, aligning them better with what the machines wanted?

That's your utopia?

I do hope you don't work for any frontier AI lab!

Are you an Idiran? You lost guys, put your (three) feet up and get over it.

"Humans, thinking they are the center of the universe since, like forever".

While I would agree that the Culture series does give a positive view of AI the novels themselves do have quite a lot of rather dark elements...

Right, there's dark elements and the Culture does its best to fix them or counter them, with all the complications and tricky ethical considerations you might expect. Thats kindof the point of the series? Commenter above asked for optimism, not "books where nothing bad happens".

I've read the first few and I think they qualify.

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